Also, I think there was a moment, when the Soviet Union fell, and Germany re-united, that South Korea recoiled from the social turmoil and costs that reunification would have brought, and the opportunity that might have existed slipped away. This is what I'm talking about. Everything you argue I take for a fact except for a couple things and come with the conclusion that the crazy costs of unification that are being contemplated is ridiculous since Korea already paid the price of unification once (the Korean War) without seeing its natural conclusion.
Ethnic distinctions in South Korean society (like between Cholla Namdo and Gyeonggi) are so minor that from a Western perspective they are virtually non existent. Ethnic distinctions do not exist in Korea (well up until recently) Well, actually this point doesn't even matter, but ethnic distinctions do exist between the English descendants in New England to the Scots/Irish in the Appalachians...
The imposition of communist rule was both natural and unavoidable. The U.S. didn't liberate all of Korea...(looking at it from a 1950s point of view), since at that point in time the vast majority of the peasants in all of Northeast Asia did indeed favor Communism.. So, your argument about China being at equal fault doesn't apply. Also, the U.S. accounted for half of all wealth at that point in time, which puts things in perspective about what the U.S. really was capable of... also check Han's comment here:. Copied and pasted in full:
And, in a similar light the U.S. was so caught up on the communist aspect of these "revolutions" going on in East Asia that the U.S. couldn't realize that these communist revolutions were really at the initial stage "a people's revolution" in that they really were people trying to build brand new institutions, after those of years past saw their countries become the play thing of foreign powers. Capitalist or Western Institutions lacked credibility to much of the people in this region at that time.
The U.S. had she been more open-minded and confident (as should have accompanied her very sizeable wealth and power relative to the rest of the world) in her approach to this region, could have seen this and had supported a Mao or Kim Il Sung or Ho Chi Minh rather than a Chiang Kai Shek or a Rhee Syng Man (who America hated as much as those in South Korea did by the way)...
The cold war would've been over before it had even started... It really wasn't about Communism in that part of the world, but the U.S. made it like that. Of course, with respect to Mao this goes before 1945... The U.S. would not have feared Communism to be this Monolithic plague. I'd like to point out how U.S. Vietnam veterans must've felt when a sitting U.S. president visited a united communist Vietname
It was obviously avoidable. It was avoided. It's just too bad it wasn't avoided all over the Korean penninsula. I say shame on all Communists and Communists sympathizers who favor a coercive society to one based on natural and free relationships among men, and shame upon them for their agressive and subversive acts all over the world, and continuing to this day, even in our own coountry, to impose their assinine view that men can be forced to conform to a utopian standard.
The world has paid a terrible price for all these flirtations with Communism, and Korea is one of the places most savaged by this alien and absurd political folly.
Bullcrap. They certainly do. Ask any Korean from Cholla Namdo. For you to deny this reality indicates to me that despite a Korean American heritage, you don't know nearly as much about Korea as I do. I'd agree that these ethnic distinctions aren't particularly deep, or particularly racial, even though the history of Cholla runs contrary to Korean mythology. The election of Roh Moo Hyun in 2002 was a huge deal for Cholla.